Rep. Loebsack Response re Campaign Finance Reform

David Loebsack 2nd District, Iowa Committees: Armed Services Subcommittees: Military Personnel Readiness Education and the Workforce Subcommittees: Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Higher Education and Workforce Training

Washington Office: 1527 Longworth House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 (202) 225-6576 District Offices: 125 South Dubuque Street Iowa City, IA 52240 (319) 351-0789 209 West 4th Street, #104 Davenport, IA 52801 (563) 323-5988

May 17, 2013

May 17, 2013 Mr. Steve Greenleaf 345 Magowan Avenue Iowa City, IA 52246-3515 Dear Mr. Greenleaf, Thank you for contacting me about the Supreme Court's Decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission.  I'm honored to represent you. Your opinion is very important to me and my priority is to provide Iowa's Second District with the best representation possible. On January 21, 2009 the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that corporate funding in elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment. In this decision, the Court struck down a provision of the McCain-Feingold Act that prevented corporations, both for profit and not for profit, from directly funding political communication.  I share your concerns about the potential influence of large corporate campaign contributions, and I strongly believe that we must ensure that the only voices that determine the outcome of elections are those of the American people. As someone who grew up in poverty struggling to make ends meet, I never thought I would see the day when the Supreme Court would rule in favor of special interests over the interests of hard working Iowans who want and deserve to have their voices heard in Washington. As your Representative in Congress, I will do all I can to ensure that power is put back in the hands of Iowans, not corporate interests, and that your concerns are heard in our nation's capital. In response to the Supreme Court's decision, The Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act (DISCLOSE), H.R. 148, was introduced on January 3, 2013.  The DISCLOSE Act would increase disclosure requirements for campaign-related spending by corporations, unions, and tax-exempt organizations.  I am a proud cosponsor of this bill, which has been referred to the House Committees on Administration, the Judiciary and Ways and Means. In addition, I am a proud cosponsor of the Fair Elections Now Act, H.R. 269, which was introduced by Representative John Yarmuth on January 15, 2013. This bill would establish the option of publicly funded campaigns and would reduce the influence of special interest groups on elections.  H.R. 269 has been referred to the House Committee on Administration for further consideration. Please be assured that I will continue to keep your views regarding campaign finance reform in mind and will continue to work diligently to ensure that the American people, not monied interests, are the ones who decide the outcome of our elections.  Thank you again for contacting me about this important issue. My office is here to assist you with any and all concerns you have, so please do not hesitate to contact me whenever you feel that I can be of assistance.  I encourage you to visit my website at www.loebsack.house.gov and sign up for my e-newsletters to stay informed of the work I'm doing for you. I am proud to serve the Second District, and I am committed to working hard for Iowans.

Sincerely, Dave Loebsack Iowa's Second District

DL/AK

A Review of A Thread of Years by John Lukacs

There are a couple of things that might help you to understand and appreciate John Lukacs. First, his career goal was to be a writer, not a historian. One can say that history, viewed from the wide lens of the Modern Age, to a close-up in Five Days in London: May 1940, to a microscopic view in vignettes as short as a brief imagined conversation, mark the range of his writing. Fortunately, for history as a discipline, and we as readers, he chose modern history as his subject matter. 

Second, you should know that one reviewer labeled Lukacs a “conservative polymath”, but Lukacs rejects the “conservative” designation because of his rejection of so much of American political conservatism. Instead, he considers himself a “reactionary impressionist”. What is that? Here’s Lukacs in an interview discussing the “reactionary” portion of his self-designation: 

“a remnant reactionary, a remnant bourgeois, a remnant admirer of the civilization and culture of the past five hundred years, European and Western." [Quoting his description of himself in his “auto-history”, Last Rites.] I say this even though I consider many of the dominant ideas and achievements of the past 500 years—for example, objectivity, progress, and materialism—to be insufficient, and I strongly resist these categorical formulations as absolutes.

Thus, Lukacs, by this self-designation as a “reactionary”, signals his unique political and historical perspective. But what about the “impressionist” portion of “reactionary impressionist”? For understanding this designation, we have no better guide than A Thread of Years. 

A Thread of Years has been labeled an “experimental work”, and Lukacs himself says that it’s neither literature nor history. I think, it’s both, with a good deal of essay and dialogue thrown in. In this work, using most of the years between 1900 and 1969, Lukacs writes short vignettes involving fictional characters within different settings in Europe and the U.S. He then comments upon and discusses the vignettes with his “alter ego”. The subjects of these vignettes vary, although a few characters appear in several of the vignettes. His locales and characters include Philadelphia and its environs (where Lukacs settled and taught), Catholic Churches, its priests and laity (Lukacs is Catholic and taught many years at a small Catholic college in Philadelphia), and Hungarians (Lukacs is a native of Hungry), along with other assorted characters and locales. Even those characters and locales with which he seems to have no direct connection are quite convincing. Any Lukacs reader quickly recognizes his erudition and his writer’s eye for character and place. 

The format of vignettes allows Lukacs to write in the manner of a novelist, a form which I have no doubt he could have mastered if he’d have chosen that path. By taking different years and settings, he gives us a sense of the ordinary human lives that co-existed with great historical events. He also demonstrates how culture and civilization have changed in the course of the first 70 years of the 20^th century (although published in 1998, Lukacs stopped his vignettes at 1969). For instance, he addresses the decline of the Anglo-Saxon elite in the U.S. and rising tide of a form of populism. The intriguing thing about this project is his ability to create these brief sketches, these impressionistic word pictures of persons and places. In this he's similar to what we experience in the great impressionistic painters. I consider him a verbal Renoir, Manet, Monet, or Degas, but not one not limited to the fin-de-siècle. Instead, he uses a large chunk of the 20^th century to locate his verbal canvasses.

The dialogues are more challenging. Like native European intellectuals that I’ve read, he alludes to sources and experiences that often elude me. The dialogues also seem to allow him to acknowledge his biases and prejudices (for instance, he does not like the film Casablanca), thereby both airing them and letting them stand or fall as the reader deems appropriate. Sometimes I felt as if I was overhearing a conversation in a foreign language that I knew a bit of. I could pick-up bits and pieces, but I still felt as though I missed the greater whole. On the other hand, we learn from listening to the adults, so the benefit far outweighs any frustration. 

In preparing for this review and blog, I found that I’d labeled 21 earlier blog entries as mentioning, if not focused upon, John Lukacs. This entry makes 22, and assuming my good fortune to keep on reading and learning, you can expect many more. After all, while out of the U.S., he’s published another book. In addition, with Lukacs, I’ve found I can re-read with continued benefit and enjoyment. What better recommendation for an author?

A Review of The Server, a novel by Tim Parks

I was glad to read on Tim Parks’ website that he considers this novel a companion work to his Teach Us to Sit Still (my review). In Teach Us to Sit Still Parks recounted his troublesome prostate and how, after rejecting the cut and hope option offered by physicians, happened upon a suggested remedy that involved, of all things, sitting. This sitting led him into the foreign world of vipassana meditation (the Buddhist meditation practice from Southeast Asia associated with the Theravadan tradition). In The Server, Parks explores the stark contract between the austerity of a Buddhist meditation retreat center and our egoistic, narratives selves prominent in the in many contemporary lives. 

The first-person narrative is a running monologue in the mind of Beth Marriot. Beth is a vivacious but troubled young woman who comes to the center and stays to serve new participants by working in the kitchen. Her mind, when unleashed, recounts and rehashes issues with parents, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, an older lover, and a brush with death, among other things. After months at the meditation center, having apparently calmed her mind to some extent, it’s turned back on by discovering a diary of a participant who recounts his own narrative of woe, despite the ban on writing while participating in the retreat. After this discovery, Beth careens through thoughts and actions quite contrary to the austere and ascetic practice of the retreat. This clash of Buddhist austerity with the contemporary, narrative self drives the story. 

The story provides an excellent vehicle for pondering how this Buddhist world-view, what one may call a non-narrative approach to life, comports with our contemporary notions of self in the land of novels, Freud, and self-expression. (I suspect that these issues exist in the “East”, too; they wouldn’t have the antidote if they didn’t suffer the disease, would they?). Parks doesn’t attempt to answer how these two attitudes might be reconciled or whether one must ultimately prevail. One suspects that the two views, which have probably competed for the length of human history, will continue to lead an uneasy, but perhaps fruitful co-existence. 

The story makes for a roller-coaster ride—this young woman has lots of karma and vivacity (are they linked?) —and sometimes you want to tell her “whoa, slow down”, but she can’t, and that makes a trip through a meditation retreat a bit of a roller-coaster ride.

A Review of The Second Circle by Patsy Rodenburg

While reading Mark Bowden’s Winning Body Language, he mentioned Patsy Rodenburg, whom I heard of somehow before. She’s an acting coach. 

Why read a book by an acting coach? Because we’re all actors, aren’t we? After all, we all act and inter-act, don’t we? By saying this, I’m not suggesting that we’re all somehow false and manipulative, although I suppose all of us are at some time or another. Most significantly, we’re all a part of a cast in a performance, or rather, many performances: with our family, in our workplace, and with our friends. Perhaps no one says it better than Shakespeare: 

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances,
 And one man in his time plays many parts

Rodenburg explores her acting ideas in the context of daily life in this book. She divides our world into three parts: the inward-looking world of the First Circle, the I-Thou world (my description) of the Second Circle, and the over-powering self of the Third Circle. She urges us to spend most of our lives in the Second Circle. She is, to my mind, teaching the process and value of living in an I-Thou world. Fortunately, her teaching is shorn of the complex language and notions of I-Thou’s great teacher, the German-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. (I haven’t read I-Thou, although I have a copy and have started it. Even a good translation of some German prose (mine by Walter Kaufman) is too daunting. For a fun and worthwhile introduction and discussion of Buber, go the Buber discussion at The Partially Examined Life.) 

Rodenburg’s ideas and suggestions about how to live in the Second Circle make a lot of sense. She provides exercises and images to help locate yourself in this inter-active arena, pulling you out of yourself (First Circle) or containing yourself (Third Circle). On the other hand, I thought the book went on too long after having established the main idea and exercises. Also, it’s something that one might learn more about by watching a DVD or webcast (which you can find on line). 

Rodenburg, like Bowden (and unlike too many philosophers), doesn’t ever forget that we’re embodied creatures, and anyone who teaches us to more fully and meaningful inhabit and communicate in the corporeal world has done us all a great service.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: Putting an End to the Nonsense About Hot Hands

From the first time I read this claim and every time since, I said to myself, "Bull shit!"

"Nerdy number-crunchers who wouldn't know the feel of the hardwoods if it bit 'em in the ass",  I mutter, even if one of them was the late Amos Tversky, research partner of Nobel winner Daniel Kahneman and with whom Kahneman surely would have shared his Nobel had Tversky lived long enough. Credentials be damned.

Anyone who's played or watched basketball knows that hot-hands exist. Oh, they are mysterious and elusive; they can appear and disappear in a whim, but they are real. Ask Michael Jordan, who, for instance, rained threes on the hapless Trailblazers one finals game. Or ask me, when I shot 7/8 from the field one night in a varsity game. (Yes, it's good enough to remember for over four decades.) A rare event? Yes, but real.

What is perhaps most annoying is that the stat guys ignore all of the subjective reality based on their naive supposition that the numbers don't lie. Maybe the numbers don't lie, but those who read these electronic tea-leaves delude themselves. Read the biography of a sports figure, or just ask an experienced player: on some nights the basket has a lid on it and on other nights it's 10-foot across. Of course, this doesn't predict the outcome of any one shot, but at the end of the night, it's real. And you'll remember the feeling, if you've done or it even if you've only seen it. It's a "wow!" experience.

Another of the annoying aspects of the stat boys is their failure to consider that games are strategic. (They must have skipped the game theory classes to do additional regressions.) Our ability to develop a hot hand varies according to our biology and psychology in the moment, as well as that of our team mates and opponents. Some nights we have our legs; others not. Against some opponents we have immense confidence; against others we quake. (Seeing a 5'10" opposing player dunk off of two feet during warm-up was very intimidating. I think that it hurt our team confidence. We lost.) Make a shot or two, and the next time out, the other coach is going to say something like Bobby Knight's "Who the hell has Hansen?" and then be told in no uncertain terms to shut him down. Or perhaps it's time to move from a zone to a man defense. One way or another, a successful shooting streak will elicit counter-measures. On the shooter's side, she'll be willing to take greater risks because of improved confidence. Alas, making a couple of lay-ups doesn't mean that you'll now be hitting your previously non-existent three-pointer.

Consider also baselines of indvidual players. If Shaquille O'Neill (or Wilt Chamberlain for you mature fans) goes to the free throw line, how likely is it that he will show a hot hand? Now take Larry Bird: think he'll have a hot hand at the free throw line? He shot over 90% for his career I believe, and he may hold or comes close the NBA record for consecutive made free-throws. If Shaq or Wilt makes a free throw you can tell me that he was "lucky"; tell me that about Bird and I'll laugh in your face.

Here's the article that says that stat guys are starting to rethink themselves and that has goaded me to set the record straight. It strikes me that they're wasting their time. Really, such nonsense from adults.

Man, I was hot.

A Review of A Delicate Truth by John le Carre

One of the perks of living in India is early release: some movies and books are released here before they are in the U.S. In our recent pass through the Delhi Airport, I spied John le Carre’s latest in paper for Rs 499 ($9.20). Sold! And I was underway as soon as we plopped down in the plane, having run late with browsing and grazing.

After completing the book, I read two reviews in the NYT. One by resident reviewer Michiko Kakutani, which was critical, and the other in the Sunday Book Review by fellow author Olen Steinhauer, which was much kinder. In a sense, I agreed with both. Le Carre, especially since the GWOT (Global War on Terror), has been almost obsessed with American heavy-handedness, blundering, and worse. As an American reader, I say to myself, “Really, we're not that dumb and brutish—are we?” Even recalling the worst of the Bush years—really? In short, Americans (acting under explicit or implicit government authority) are cast as bad guys. One must admire le Carre’s righteousness and his willingness to confront what he perceives to be the malign powers that should be wearing the  white hats: the U.S. and U.K. Such plot attributes will keep Hollywood light years away from producing a film version. Ditto BBC? But there is also an artistic price: I agree with Kakutani that Le Carre creates too Manichean a world for him to reach the heights that he did in the Smiley books that arose out of the Cold War.

Also, as Kakutani remarked, this le Carre book, similar to some of his more recent efforts, takes an almost Hitchcock-like focus on rather ordinary folk pulled into waters far over their heads. Or, as Steinhauer describes it in his review, the focus has gone from spymasters to whistle-blowers. In this case, the protagonists are two U.K. Foreign Service officers, neither of especially high rank. They have been, they both learn, played and marginalized, and they seek to set things straight. In this way, le Carre pulls us into their stories, and here is where le Carre still shines: in setting, character, and dialogue The little things that can make his world of spies so much larger than that of others writing with in the genre occurs because it contains wives, daughters, lovers, mentors, Cornwall, London, among other things, all finely sketched. Of course, it also contains plenty of conversations that record the machinations of politicians and bureaucrats. 

In the end, I must say that the Official Secrets Act and le Carre’s description of new star-chamber proceedings (which they hold the copyright to) doesn’t allow for any sense of British superiority over the gung-ho Americans. Steinhauer, by the way, appropriately defends le Carre against charges of anti-Americanism. It is the failure of American leaders to stand up for important values that he deplores, not the people as a whole. Many of us can say “Amen” to opposing many U.S. government actions in the last . . . . well, going back a long time. 

In the end, as usual with le Carre, we aren’t awarded a happy ending, but we receive lots of ambiguity. How do these characters continue their lives? In what I must warn as a potential spoiler alert, the story as a whole and the ending especially reminded me of the 1970s Robert Redford-Faye Dunaway flick, “The Days of the Condor”, which C and I had watched not long before we left for India, and which I rate very highly within the genre.